


Father

by MillysarusRex



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Fatherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 10:01:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18826408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MillysarusRex/pseuds/MillysarusRex
Summary: The different men in Arya Stark's life who taught her about honor.





	Father

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off a tumblr prompt by [felicitys-smoaks](https://felicitys-smoaks.tumblr.com/)

**Father**

Arya loved her father more than anything. Ned Stark was the greatest man who ever lived, if she had anything to say about it. She remembered gathering wild flowers from the fields in summer for him, and the smile that would crinkle his eyes as she presented him with her messy bouquets.

Her father never scolded her for playing with her brothers, and always laughed when she’d sneak away from her sewing lessons to best little Bran in archery, even when her mother would fix him with a stern look. He was the only person in the world who seemed to love her for who she truly was - well, except for perhaps Jon Snow - and Arya  _worshiped_ him for it.

He was kind and just and honorable. As a child, she had thought honor the most important trait a person could have, and Ned Stark was considered the most honorable man in the Seven Kingdoms. But the way that some men sneered the title, _the honorable Ned Stark_ , made her think that not all were impressed by her lord father. She had never cared what they thought - what were the opinions of a few jealous lords compared to her beloved father?

But, in the blistering heat of the South, she learned that honor could very well get a man killed. It had killed her father. And with the swing of a massive sword, her faith in honor rolled down the steps of the Sept along with her father’s head.

—-

The journey up the King’s Road to the Wall was arduous and bloody. She often felt close to death each time a team of bandits decided to rob their little camp or a particularly daring prisoner took an interest in her. Yoren did he best to shield her.

“Until we reach the Wall, you’re no longer Arya Stark,” he hissed in that accent of his that reminded her so much of home. “You’d do best to remember that, lest you want to have every raper here seeing who could put their bastard in a high-born girl.”

He was not one of her father’s bannermen, instead a sworn brother of the Night’s Watch, and a close friend of her uncle Benjen. He’d been the one to smuggle her out of the city. He’d shielded her eyes as the Mountain took her father’s head before a cheering crowd. Yoren was certainly not her father, but he was as devoted to protecting her as a father might.

So when ser Amory Lorch drove a sword through the back of his neck, Arya mourned for him.

—-

Beric Dondarrion was once a bannerman of House Stark. It might be strange to think that the leader of the Brotherhood Without Banners was once a lord himself, but Arya had regarded him with the cold disinterest that befit a man who broke his vows to his liege lord.

He looked different, but Arya supposed that’s what happened when a man was killed and brought back to life over and over. She had known little about the lightning lord when she was a child.  _(She was always far more interested in the stories of knights and dragon riders to care what other lords got up to.)_  And anyway, any man who abandoned his honor to be an outlaw and had no qualms about abducting children was no true knight to her.

“You’re not our prisoner, little lady,” He repeated Thoros of Myr’s earlier declaration. “We will get you back to your lady mother.”

“For a price,” she sneered. Beric shrugged.

“We do what we must to survive, little lady. And we need gold to survive.”

Later, she’d been laying by the fire when she overheard Beric reminiscing over his numerous resurrections with Thoros.

“Can you revive a man with no head?” She’d asked softly.

“Each time I awaken by the flames, I’m a little less the man I was before. Lord Stark was a good, honorable man. I would never wish such a life on him.”

She’d wanted to ask what an outlaw could possibly know about honor, but she kept her mouth shut. She’d been right, of course, because a moon’s turn later, he sold off her only friend to a Red Witch.

His name was added to her list for that.

_(But years later, in the darkest recesses of her ancestral home, she’d cry over his beaten, broken body.)_

— -

The Hound was a miserable old shit. He stank of wine and piss half the time and never seemed to care that it bothered her, even as she struggled violently against his strong grip.

“You’re not going anywhere wolf-bitch. Not until I get my gold from that twat of a King you call a brother.”

He’d been on her list for a very long time. She often dreamed about running him through with Needle. He’d killed Mycah. It’d be poetic justice. Her father always said that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.

Robb would surely allow her the honor.

When they reached the Twins, she’d felt an almost ecstatic glee at the thought of seeing his head on a spike.

But, it wasn’t his head that would be lost that night. Robb had always looked so much like their mother…the sight of Grey Wind’s bloody head mounted onto her brother’s mutilated body would haunt her for the rest of her life.

She’d cried into the Hound’s armor that night.

He was there the first time she killed a man.

He was a Frey soldier. Some beady eyed fuck. She didn’t care what his name was or who he was, he’d been there with the others, had slaughtered her mother, brother and the good sister she’d never met. He’d declared war on House Stark by slaying Robb’s direwolf.

Had it not been for the Hound, she might have died at the hands of Frey’s, too. And when they sat eating the abandoned food surrounded by dead soldiers, he’d asked if that was her first kill. 

_(She told him that it was her first man.)_

She returned the favor in a tavern some time later. The Lannister soldier who stole her sword was there and he joined them at their little table, cheerfully insisting that the Hound join them to raid and pillage their way through the Seven Kingdoms. She still hated him, but she couldn’t help the smirk when he told the twat that king could go fuck himself. When the Hound flipped the table onto the Lannister soldier, he easily killed each of his men. He was fighting the last of the men when Poliver snuck up behind him ready to strike. Before he could deliver he killing blow, she incapacitated him, snatched back Needle, and drove it into his throat.

They shared a love for killing, or so Arya quipped much to the Hound’s chagrin. He snapped that he no one liked killing and laughed when she told him that she would have killed King Joffrey with a chicken bone, had she gotten to him first.

The last time she spoke to him, before he journeyed to the North to fight alongside her brother, he’d been dying. He’d demanded that she kill him and taunted her when she refused. Instead, she took his coins and made her way to the nearest shipyard.

_(She’d taken his name off her list long ago.)_

—-

Traveling with the Hound was not the cleverest of ideas, but Arya knew she’d prefer no other companion. He wasn’t the chatty type and neither was she, so they mostly journeyed to King’s Landing in comfortable silence.

Three days ride from the Red Keep, she found herself regretting her decision.

“Did he ever find you?”

“Who?” She asked, biting into the leg of rabbit she’d caught. 

“ _Who?_  That bastard blacksmith of yours.”

She hadn’t expected him to bring up that. “Gendry?”

“Yes, the new Lord  _Baratheon_. The twat nearly was nearly out of his trousers trying to find you.” His laugh sounds cold in his gravely voice.

She refused to look into his eyes. “He found me.” And that was that and neither of them bring up the new Lord of Storms End again.

—-

Losing her father had been the hardest thing she’d ever went through. Seeing the downtrodden look on his face had broken her heart because she knew he was dying the worst kind of death - the death of a traitor.

She never expected to feel the loss of another as boldly as she did her lord father. But, as they stood there in the crumbling shell of the Red Keep, she knew that her heart was breaking again. Saying goodbye was never easy, and Arya was alarmed at how difficult it was to part with the Hound. They had shared so much of their journey together, from the death of her brother to the battle against the dead. It was with a heavy heart that she realized that she could remember the Hound’s many lessons more clearly than those of her father.

He’d become somewhat of a father somewhere along the way, she supposed. And so when he demanded that she live, she knew she had no other choice but to obey. They would never see each other again, she knew. She’d gotten her revenge and now it was his turn to cross a name off his list, the only name on his list -  _Gregor Clegane_.

“Sandor, thank you.”

It was the first time she’d ever called him by that name, the first time she ever said it out loud.

It made him smile.

—-

When she was little, she had loved her father more than anything. He was the only man who ever allowed her to be herself, and never blamed her for not being a lady.

That is, until she meets Gendry. Gendry loves that she rides horses and wears breeches. He never scolds her for sparing in the training yard - he  _makes_ the weapons she uses. He laughs when she makes unladylike quips at the lords who feel bold enough to remark on her behavior. When a man makes a vulgar pass at her he smirks and tells the little lordling, who is cowering in his boots before the burly Lord of Storm’s End, that it isn’t  _he_ that the lord should fear, it’s the lady herself.

Gendry is kind and brave and honorable. He stood by her side when they were children and he’d defended her even when he thought she was a little bastard boy named Arry. He’d gone beyond the wall with her brother and fought side by side with their allies when the dead came marching down onto Winterfell. He’d nearly lost his life during the battle of King’s Landing.

She once told her father that she’d never marry a lord, that it wasn’t her. And her father had smiled warmly and she’d felt loved. When she repeats the words again, it’s with a heavier heart, and the look on the newly legitimized Lord Baratheon’s face makes her feel like she’s run him through with her sword.

She tries not to think about that, though, because there is no use ruminating on the past anymore. Not when they’ve survived so much. Not when they have so much to live for.

_(And so when she sees him again, standing in his new castle, with a new limp and a new name, she tells him she could be his lady.)_

When they marry beneath the heart tree, she wants to weep, because it is Jon who takes her cloak from Gendry and not her father. She smiles happily at her beloved cousin anyway, and knows that he is watching down on her with pride.

House Stark has finally joined with House Baratheon.

—-

It takes a great deal of strength to be a good father. She’s met enough men and women to know what the loss of such a role model can do to a person. But, she also knows that a man does not have to be related by blood to be a good one.

However, Gendry will be a wonderful father. He dotes on her while she is heavy with child, and coos at her belly whenever their babe kicks. He never knew his father, Arya knows, but he is as loving and kind and honorable as her own. When she goes into labor, it is in the highest room of the single tower that is Storm’s End. Her dutiful husband refuses to leave her side, although his men insist that it is tradition for the man to go hunting during the birthing. He eagerly follows each and every one of her commands; even the most ridiculous, which makes him run up and down the stairs to and from the kitchens for fruits and honey.

He never complains, never argues, which makes her roll her eyes, because he’s never been afraid to tell her she can go shove it.

He will be a good father, she knows, because he stands there by her side and allows her to nearly crush his fingers in her deathly grip as they welcome their twin sons into the world.

_(It is a surprise but a welcomed one, and Arya and Gendry clutch their babies to their chest.)_

“We should name them after our fathers .” Arya says, staring into one of her son’s red screaming face. His eyes have not opened yet, but she hopes they’re Baratheon blue. “So, you’ll be little Ned.”

She smiles at her husband who is staring wide eyed at the screeching little bundle in his arms. “I never knew my father…it doesn’t feel right to name my son after him.”

She raises a brow and smiles. “Then what would you prefer his name be?”

Gendry looks at her then, those eyes she loves so much staring deeply into her own. “I think our sons deserve to be named after the brave men who taught their brilliant mother what honor is. He’ll be Sandor.”

“Sandor.” She whispers, and her heart feels like it’s going to explode.


End file.
